Epicurean Adventures from Eugene, Oregon

soup

My efforts to cook down the freezer continue, and soupily. I am off to pick up the beef today, and am proud to announce I managed to clear about half the space, so I should be fine. A major part of the square footage was taken up by what I thought was a half of a pig’s head (nope, a whole; surprise!) from my butchery class with Camas Davis. I also found a jowl and a cheek, as one does.

Because the head was so big, I roasted it and stripped it for tacos (cabeza), then added the leftover bits to pork stock for a wonderful green chile posole with the other parts I had uncovered in my latest archaeological dig.

Posole! If you haven’t tried it, it’s wonderful. I used up a bag of homemade posole (nixtamalized) corn, made last year, the last of my peppers from the two potted plants I had maintained until the frost, the last of the green tomatoes, some roasted anchos I found in the freezer, a big handful of oregano and tarragon still hanging on in the garden, and that wonderfully rich, gelatinous cabeza meat and some pork shoulder. The cabeza really added so much to the broth, and I recommend it if you should have a head in your freezer. No questions asked.

If you’re making it, here are a few more tips: I threw in a handful of local cornmeal to slightly thicken the broth, and simmered everything for 30 minutes or so, adding a lemon and some powdered ancho pepper and garlic powder near the end of cooking. Perfect winter meal, all local, but with a taste of warm sunny skies.

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I spoke to a full house at the mushroom festival on Sunday. A full house, I’d like to believe, that was there to soak in my culinary wisdom and wit about mushroom soups and dumplings, but I am not too vain to know they were there because they were soaked. The makeshift stage, arranged as one does at rural festivals with hay bales and sheltered by a fabric tent, provided a reason to come sit and listen to my radio voice in the downpour. Heck, it was the only dry spot with seating in the entire joint, and one that smelled like garlic and pork and ginger and mushrooms, so I know it was a natural place to hang out. Yay!

If you’re here because of the demo, welcome!

So I talked about three mushroom soups using wild mushroom stock, and promised to provide the recipes here. One was a creamy, full-bodied soup from Eastern Europe featuring sauerkraut and pork, and the other two were lighter and good for vegetarian dining. I also discussed two mushroom dumplings: bolete (a.k.a. porcini or cep) spaetzle and chanterelle potstickers. The spaetzle is good in soup, the potstickers, of course, are good as an accompaniment to soup.

Wild mushrooms in these recipes can be used interchangeably with what you have on hand, but I suspect most of you will have chanterelles or hedgehogs or boletes if you forage in Oregon, or you can rely on the markets to get others and the dried shiitakes or boletes or Chinese brown mushrooms you’ll need for the stock.

I don’t have any magic way to make pictures of brown or creamy soups look good, so enjoy this picture of spaetzle with pork medallions in a creamy chanterelle sauce I snapped in Germany.

Interested in more wild mushroom recipes? Check out the brand new and comprehensive community cookbook compiled by the Cascade Mycological Society as a fundraiser for scholarships. If you’re new to foraging, this is THE local organization to know.

Wild Mushroom Stock

This recipe is based on a stock I made for a Japanese vegan dinner using only dried shiitakes and soy, and a more complex stock popular at Greens restaurant in San Francisco. It’s dark and well-rounded in flavor, and great for vegetarian soups and stews.

Bring water to a boil, then add dried mushrooms (they will reconstitute in the boiling water) and the rest of the ingredients. Simmer for 1 hour or more, then let cool in pot. Remove vegetables, reserving the mushrooms for other uses (like fried rice), if you like. Clarify stock using an egg raft or several coffee filters and a sieve.

Another idea for this stock is a vegetarian version of the classic French onion soup, enriched by caramelized onions and topped with a melty cheese toast. Wild foods expert Butter Wilde has a recipe for a gorgeously rich Porcini French Onion Soup on Hunger and Thirst, her blog.

Wild Mushroom and Sauerkraut Pork Goulash (Szekely Goulash)

Chanterelles are a delicious addition to this traditional Transylvanian stew. This recipe is very popular every time we do a sauerkraut class with the Master Food Preserver trainees, and I make it frequently. It’s a good use for your homemade fresh sauerkraut. Consider rinsing your kraut if it’s very salty; I usually don’t. The pork browns on top of the sauerkraut as it’s baking, so no need to brown ahead of time. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and a shake of paprika on top.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In a heavy dutch oven or similar pot with a lid, heat onions, garlic, and caraway seeds with oil until onions are limp and golden brown. Add chopped mushrooms and saute until liquid cooks away, then add paprika, bay leaf, dillweed, and sauerkraut, stir well.

Layer pork cubes on top of sauerkraut and add stock.

Bring to a boil, then cover, place in oven and cook for 2 hours, or until pork falls apart.

After removing from oven, add cream and let flavors meld for 15 minutes or so before serving. Do not boil again after adding cream.

Wild Mushroom Soup with Hazelnut Spaetzle

Bring mushroom stock up to a simmer, then add cooked spaetzle (see recipe below). While soup is heating, sauté tiny cubes of carrot, potato, celery hearts, and shallot in a little vegetable oil until browned, then add to soup dishes. Pour soup on top, dividing spaetzle evenly between the bowls.

Wild Mushroom and Hazelnut Spaetzle

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon ground hazelnuts or almonds, or similar nut flour

1 tablespoon powdered dried bolete/porcini/cep mushrooms (grind dried mushrooms in a clean coffee grinder to a dust, pick out any remaining large pieces)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

1/8 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

3-4 tablespoons milk

Mix dry ingredients, then add egg and half the milk, and beat well. Add more milk until the batter is stiff but not yet a dough. Let sit in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

In a medium pot bring several cups of slightly salted water to a boil. The water should fill the pot about halfway. Turn down to a simmer.

Method 1: Using a ricer, spaetzle-maker, or colander with large holes, push a portion of the batter through the holes in large strands directly in the simmering water. Repeat after dumplings float to top (see below).

Method 2: Spread the batter out flat on a large cutting board or tray without sides. with a long knife, cut off bits of batter in very thin strips, pushing them into the boiling water as you cut. Move quickly so the dumplings will cook evenly in a batch. Repeat after dumplings float to top (see below).

When the cooked spaetzle are ready, they will float to the surface. Remove and drain, then toss into a bowl with a teaspoon or two of oil and stir gently to lubricate, so they won’t stick.

These are best in any clear soup, or drain well after cooking, then toss in some hot butter and brown a little before serving with a saucy main course as one would noodles.

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In this endlessly hot weather, the only thing to do is to delicately sip cold soups and drink Pimm’s Cup. Why don’t I have a croquet course set up on my lawn again? This is outrageous. I demand immediate measures to be taken to remedy the situation.

Until then, I will be eating chilled gazpacho. I like my gazpacho milled to a fine consistency, then made chunky with chopped veg and freshly made garlic croutons. This version added Sungolds and fried padrons from Groundwork Organics.

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Of the many cool vegetables grown by relatively new farm Turnip the Beet, the ‘Ozette Fingerling’ potato must top the list. Rush over to the farm tomorrow at the Lane County Farmers Market to see if Farmers Lela and John have any of these big fat fingerlings left. Locavores won’t regret it. Last Saturday, Lela told me that they might have them for another week.

On that very day, when I was trying and failing to blow through the market just to get a few things, I was stopped by a very excited anthropologist who told me that the Ozette, grown by the Makah people of what is now the tippiest tip of northwest Washington for centuries, was available for sale.

The Ozette is a potato that came up the coast from the Andes, I was informed dramatically, bypassing Europe altogether! Unlike most potatoes that were collected in Peru and environs by the Spanish and colonized back in the Old World, then returned to America, the Ozette had been left behind by Spanish colonists. They had decided the Makah area around Neah Bay wasn’t a good port, so they left their settlement behind. The Makah people, who seem like a sensible lot, saved the potatoes from the garden, named them after a local island, and planted and cherished them for generations.

The potato looks like a long, fat oca, if you know that Andean root from your travels to Peru or New Zealand. It’s bumpier and creamier and smoother than a standard fingerling. When baked, the potato becomes dense but still floury, like a Russet on steroids. And the flavor is nutty and rich. It makes an absolutely delicious soup because of the starch content, and doesn’t need butter if you bake or mash it. I still have a couple left I’d like to fry. My guess is that they’ll be terrific latkes for Thanksgivukkah this year, if they last in the fridge or cellar that long.

If you’re interested in the history of this singular Pacific Northwesterner, check out Gary Nabhan’s Renewing America’s Food Traditions. You can also read about Slow Food’s presidium (scroll down) Ozette project and the details of the Ozette’s development and commercialization as a seed potato. There’s a great video featuring narration from a Makah woman about Native farming and naming the Ozette that was produced by the Seattle area restaurant/farm The HerbFarm, one of the first non-Makah Nation concerns to grow the potato. The Ozette’s entry in the Slow Food Ark of Taste is here.

The Ozette made me a wonderful vegetarian soup this week with some leftover corncob broth I had from prepping my Bodacious corn for freezing for the year. It’s fine to substitute water, but the corn added a snappy note to the potatoes and cauliflower. I’d strongly recommend it. Corn broth freezes beautifully. I love potato soup, and think it never needs added bacon or pancetta, but if you wanted to gild the lily…

Make your corn cob stock by simmering six denuded cobs in heavily salted water for about 20 minutes, then remove cobs. Or use chicken stock or water. Saute onion until golden brown. Add onion, cauliflower, potato, and carrot to the corn broth, and cook until soft. Taste and add salt and white pepper to your liking. Mash vegetables, then blend with a hand blender until smooth. Alternatively, use chinois to mill soup smooth. Add fresh thyme and buttermilk and simmer on the lowest heat for a couple of minutes to blend flavors, then serve.

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My new addiction is an old Russian fermented drink called kvass. It’s great as a breakfast juice or as an afternoon refreshment on a hot day: slightly sour, ice cold, a strong nose of beery grain or funky beet. it’s a drink for those of us who like deep, dark, barnyardy flavors. Or beer!

As discussed in my Russian zakuski party post, kvass is a healthful tonic full of enzymes and the lactobacilli that are the new popular kids on the block. Whey can be added to rye bread or raw vegetables and fruits with nothing more than water, and the liquid will magically be soured to your taste. Like lacto-fermented pickles, kvass sits on the counter until the good bacteria multiply and give it a characteristic tang.

I’m at work on my first blackberry kvass and a fermented version of tomato juice that I’m planning to push on an unsuspecting friend for bloody marys, and I will report back. Until then, I wanted to share some easy cold soup recipes using kvass as the base, since I’ve already gone on about it and I can’t get enough.

Easy Beet Kvass

Chop up two big red beets; add to a half-gallon jar with two teaspoons of salt and a 1/4 cup of whey, sauerkraut juice, or a similar fermented liquid to hasten fermentation. I used fermented dill pickle juice in the photo above, which is why you see a juniper berry floating on top.

Fill jar 3/4 to top with water and stir. Let sit on the counter for 2-4 days, depending on how sour you’d like the mix. (I went for 4 days and the flavor was great for soup.) Skim off any mold bits daily. Strain and refrigerate. Drink as is, or use uncooked as a liquid for cold soups, correcting for salt.

Beet Kvass Borscht

Serves 4.

There are various names for soups like this in Russian and Polish, but let’s just keep it simple. You have two choices here: you can add your vegetables and let sit in the stock overnight for improved flavor but a thoroughly hot pink color; or you can add your vegetables just prior to serving for pretty colors (above). It’s, as they say, all good.

To a quart of cold kvass, chop up and add some or all of the following: cooked beets of various hues, cucumbers, scallions, chives, dill weed, apples, hardboiled eggs. Serve immediately or let flavors develop in the refrigerator. (But if you decide to add eggs, place on top just before serving.) Taste and salt if necessary. A gamechanging addition, should you have it on hand, is a good slug of dill pickle juice. Or try kimchi juice? Optional garnish: more herbs, a dollop of sour cream.

Rye Bread Kvass

This recipe is slightly more complicated and gooey than beet kvass, and yields a mildly alcoholic brew. You’ll need to get your hands on decent rye bread, either light or dark, with no preservatives. Darker rye, such as the thinly sliced German or Russian stuff that’s bursting with grain and almost moist, is terrific but will yield a darker color for the kvass. In the picture, my kvass is a combination of about 1:3 dark:light rye. Alternatively, you can make your own rye or buckwheat mash, but I’ll leave it up to your powers of the internet to find a recipe for that.

I’m going to play with yeast types (I’ve heard ale and champagne yeasts make better kvass) and did not bother to secondary-ferment my kvass, as I wanted it for soup and fizzy soup sounds kind of gross to me, so let me know if you have any advice.

Half gallon jar or crock

5-6 slices good quality bakery or German rye bread

packet of active dry yeast or piece of sour dough or 1/2 cup whey

fresh juice of one lemon

1/4 cup honey

handful of raisins

1/2 teaspoon salt

(For secondary fermentation, you will also need a 2-liter plastic bottle or similar)

Dry bread in the following manner: (1) let it sit on your counter until hard; or (2) toast in the oven until hard and golden brown. If it burns a little, that’s ok, since it will add to the flavor. Place in half-gallon jar.

Boil 7 cups of water and pour over bread in half-gallon jar. Cover and let sit overnight.

Strain bread and press very gently to get as much liquid out as possible. Discard bread and pour liquid back into jar. Add yeast or sourdough or whey, lemon juice, honey, salt, and some raisins. Cover and let sit on the counter for 2-4 days, checking for bubbles (good) and skimming off any moldy bits (bad) daily. It should smell a little like beer once it gets going and look like the photo below.

For secondary fermentation, strain the kvass through cheesecloth and pour into a 2-liter bottle. Add a few raisins to bottle. Seal the cap and let sit for a few days. Fermentation will build up inside the bottle. When the raisins float to the top, it will be done. Refrigerate and use as a drink sweetened with more honey, or as a delicious cold soup stock.

Okroshka (Cold Rye Vegetable Soup)

Serves 4.

Similar to the borscht recipe above, add chopped vegetables to a quart of cold rye kvass. Since this is a clear soup, don’t add beets or the color will be ruined. Season with a bit of and a healthy dose of dill pickle juice, whole grain mustard, salt, and parsley.

There are as many versions of this soup as there are Russians. Sandor Katz offers a version with potatoes and turnips in addition to the apples and cucumbers, but I’m not sure I like the texture of potatoes in cold broth because they are softer than the crisp apples and tend to taste merely waterlogged to me. I might try a version that is only cold cooked veg, though: yellow or chioggia beets, tiny waxed potatoes, tiny turnips, steamed Dutch round carrots. Several recipes call for the addition of chopped fermented dill pickles, a brilliant touch if you ask me.

In any case, the soup is even better with more dill and sour cream mixed in.

Oh, and one more. I already posted my cold melon and cucumber soup made with kvass recipe here, but for sake of completeness…

Melon Cucumber Soup with Shiso

Serves 6.

1 honeydew or other pretty green-fleshed melon

3-4 medium pickling cucumbers or one firm, medium-sized cucumber

1/2 cup kvass

1/2 stale dinner roll or a slice of white bread

a pinch or two of salt

1/4 cup any chopped green or banana pepper

1-2 tablespoons tarragon

5-6 green shiso (perilla) leaves, plus more for garnish, optional

crème fraîche for garnish, optional

Wash and peel melon, cut into chunks. Peel and seed cucumber only if using one of those grocery store kinds with leathery skin and big seeds. Tear bread into pieces and soak in kvass. Add to food processor bowl or blender melon, chunks of cucumber, kvass/bread, salt, peppers, tarragon, and shiso. Blend until as smooth as possible. You might try pressing through a food mill or chinois after this step, if you and your guests are fancy.

Refrigerate for several hours, up to overnight but not more, to blend flavors. Serve with a dollop of crème fraîche and a chiffonade of shiso in each bowl.

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I’m really into cold soups this summer. It’s like mainlining vegetables. And my latest love, kvass (yes, yes, a recipe soon forthcoming, I promise), is making them all the better. Kvass, a fermented drink made from bread, beets, or fruits, sours up a sweet soup and gives it depth.

This melon-cucumber soup, when done with a meltingly ripe melon from Eastern Oregon, will be too sweet, so you need the balancing agents: kvass, cucumber, green pepper, salt. Be careful with your garden cucumbers — they can be bitter in this hot, dry weather. Taste each one before using.

Shiso is an herb everyone should grow, both the green and purple kinds. Its flavor is a little like basil, a little like tarragon, a little like holy basil, a little like mint. The purple stuff provides a great dye for pickles, and dried, produces a traditional topping for Japanese rice. The green stuff can be salted to preserve and used fresh on seafood and, as you shall see, in cold soups.

Melon Cucumber Soup with Shiso

Serves 6.

1 honeydew or other pretty green-fleshed melon

3-4 medium pickling cucumbers or one firm, medium-sized cucumber

1/2 cup kvass, should you be lucky enough to have it, or hefeweizen or other light-flavored beer

1/2 stale dinner roll or a slice of white bread

a pinch or two of salt

1/4 cup any chopped green or banana pepper

1-2 tablespoons tarragon

5-6 green shiso (perilla) leaves, plus more for garnish, optional

crème fraîche for garnish, optional

Wash and peel melon, cut into chunks. Peel and seed cucumber only if using one of those grocery store kinds with leathery skin and big seeds. Tear bread into pieces and soak in kvass. Add to food processor bowl or blender melon, chunks of cucumber, kvass/bread, salt, peppers, tarragon, and shiso. Blend until as smooth as possible. You might try pressing through a food mill or chinois after this step, if you and your guests are fancy.

Refrigerate for several hours, up to overnight but not more, to blend flavors. Serve with a dollop of crème fraîche and a chiffonade of shiso in each bowl.

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When I’m not gorging myself on summer tomatoes, I turn to the sweet delight of barely cooked corn on the cob. I have two methods of making fresh corn, neither original but both foolproof:

1) Put stockpot about 2/3 full of heavily salted water on stove, or, as we do, on an outdoor camp stove in the heat of summer. Turn heat on high, then add shucked corn. Cover. When water boils, corn is done.

2) Shuck outside layers of corn husks. When you’re down to the silk and one or two layers of thin, light husk, carefully remove as many of the silk strands as you can, leaving at least one layer of husk intact. Grill on whatever fire you’ve got going (if too hot, move to sides of grill), turning corn to get all sides. Remove husk before serving. The beauty of this method is that the corn won’t get charred and overcooked on the grill, just the husks will, but you’ll get a nice smokey taste.

Once the corn is stripped from the cob, the only difficulty you’ll have is deciding what to do with it. Freeze it for later? Eat it now as is, maybe pan roasted in a bit of brown butter? Make salsa? Make a creamy green chile-corn pudding or souffle? Fresh corn polenta? A corn panna cotta?

Everyone should buy enough early sweet corn to freeze for winter meals. If you cook it in one of the two manners above, you won’t need to parboil it before freezing. Remove the corn off the cob, place it in freezer safe containers, and freeze. I like to use our local ‘Bodacious’ hybrid, a bi-color sweet corn, for freezing.

As much as I love the combination of corn and cream, I find most corn chowders to be too thick and rich for my tastes in the heat of summer. I want the freshness of the corn to shine, enhanced by green vegetable notes like celery and poblano pepper, with just a touch of cream. I find that if you use fresh corn just stripped from the cob and corncob broth, you can get away with making a lighter version of chowder that has plenty of flavor from peppers and bacon. It’s also very pretty. The broth is thickened with a bit of natural potato starch and the milky inner part of the kernels.

I realized, too, that this chowder is a perfect use for your tiny, marble-sized garden potatoes that are hard to use elsewhere. Add as many as you have, then cut other waxy potatoes into pieces about the same size.

You may use either already cooked or raw corn for this recipe, but do use summer corn that you’ve removed from the cob yourself. Raw corn will make the chowder creamier and sweeter, but pre-cooking corn on the cob makes it easier to remove the kernels. I rely on frozen corn cob broth to eliminate a step, but you can make fresh broth as you’re preparing the other vegetables.

Defrost corn cob broth, if you are using frozen. Prepare your corn from corn on the cob (either pre-cooked or raw) by removing the kernels, making sure to scrape the inner part of the corn kernels from the cob with the back of a spoon.

If you are making fresh broth, reserve the cobs and prepare the broth, using the recipe linked above.

Prepare the vegetables. Roast peppers over an open flame or on your electric burner on high heat, turning until skin blackens and blisters. Set aside to cool in a brown paper bag or covered bowl. Wash and trim roots and bad bits off scallions, then char them by placing them whole on the burner, turning quickly, until about 25% blackened. Let scallions cool until easy to handle, then chop.

Brown your bacon over medium heat in a dutch oven large enough for the soup. Remove and cool, leaving the fat in the pot. Add diced onion and celery to bacon fat and cook until translucent. Dice bacon and add back to pot. Add potatoes, corn, herbs, and salt and pepper.

Cook over medium low heat for about 20 minutes, then add chopped peppers, charred chopped scallions, and milk. Turn down to a simmer. When potatoes are soft enough to yield easily to a knife slipped into their little bodies, adjust seasonings and serve.

Food Preservation News

Get 'em while you can: Interested in free publications on preserving just about anything that grows in Oregon? Extension offices in the PNW have worked together to create a research-based library of resources, now available in .pdf form.